Los Angeles daily herald., 1887-08-21
TORTURE.
ul-Health Produced by
Wearing the Corset.
REVIVAL OF TIGHT LACING.
A Victim of Tight Lacing-Burst-
ing of a Blood vessel-Disease
Caused by the Stays.

residing Ill tlc OiouCoetoi Ioau, i'o
gents park, who had died suddenly on
the preceding Sunday evening as she
was leaving Park chapel. The house
surgeon of the Northwest London
hospital, who had made an examina-
tion of the body, testified before the
coroner that she was woman who
had laced very tightly. In fact, she
must at all times have found ordi-
nary respiration task OF eX-
treme difficulty, and ultimately the
lungs not being allowed free play,
blood vessel had burst, producing
synccpe and death. the jury re-
turned verdict in accordance with
the evidence, and we are entitled to
ask whether the most recent addition
to the list of victims to tight-laclng
will have any influence in staying the
prevalence OF barbarous and mis-
chieyous fashion. 1t is much, how
ever to be feared that all the homilies
of the medical faculty, reiterated over
and over again, will fail to persuade
ladies that tight lacing is sure means
of running their health, and very oft
en- has fatal results; while it will be
quite as difficult to persuade the fair
sex that the vast majority OF sensible
men look upon an hour-glass or wasp
waist as not only ugly but ridiculous.
A REVOLUTION AGAINST THE CORSET.
The instrument of construction APP
piled to the chest was an invention of
depraved vanity, with aview of giving
to the female figure a supposed light
ness which it ought not to possess, or
to conceal some deformities, which
stays very frequently aggravata instead
of allaying. Jean Jacques Rousseau,
with all the power of his genius and
all the warmth of the interest
which he took in youth, ex-
posed the lamentable corruption
Of taste which asserts that the figure
is excellent in proportion to the waist.
The philosopher of Geneva exercised
more social influence, perhaps, in his
time than any writer in Europe, and
for a while stays went out of fashion
in France. Stiff corsets were still worn
by the ladies of the old court, but SEN
sible mothers came to the agreement
that their daughters should subject
themselves to this voluntary punish
ment at as late a period as possible,
and not until their wedding day were
they allowed to wear stays. The revo-
luton swept away the corset altogether
as well as hoop petticoats, but stays
again made their appearance toward the
end of the first empire A very harm
less affair, scarcely broader than the
''fascia manillares" of the Romans,
was the imperial bodice, for waists
were then worn excessively short. and
the stays were without busks, stiff
pieces of whalebone or steel plates.
Modified, however, as they were, the
strong common sense of Napoleon re-
yplted against the reintroduction of
the garment. ''Coryisart,t. said the
ruler, whose business it was to know
everything, to his physician, 'the cor
set is coquetry of the worst taste. 1t
tortures women and maltreats their
progeny; it means frivolity ii heralds
decadence."
REVIVAL OF TIGHT LACING.
These words were full OF sagacity,
but when the mysterious DEGREES OF
fashion-decrees which are as occult
as those of fate-brought about the
revival of long waists, tight stays be-
came once more the mode, and the
female chest was bruised by that
dreadful instrument of torture, the
steel busk, which had origi-
nally been brought into France in
1882 by Catherine de Medici. The
busk was a long, fiat, rigid strip of
wood or whalebone, and sometimes
of metal. The old surgeons, Roder-
lex and Ambrose Pare, had inveighed
against it: Montaigne and Riolau had
laughed at it; the Able Outlet had
preached against it, and the Emperor
Joseph had striven to drive it out OF
Austria by ordaining that all women
leading immoral lives should wear
stays with stiff busks. Medical warn
ing, satire, sermons, edicts of police
had all been in vain. In the present
epoch, although tight lacing is fearfully
prevalent, and is Staying its
thousands of silly votaries every year,
the busk has ceased to be an instru-
ment of torture. 1t is an integral part
of the corset, whereas the old busk,
which was covered with chamois
leather, could be made to slide in and
out in a vertical tuck in the front OF
the stays. The modern busk is
fastened and divided down the
middle like the tree of a Mex
lean saddle. 1t is made of very
flexible steel, which should give to
every movement of the body, and per
se it is a wholly innocuous portion of
the corset. The mischief and the
peril are at the back. Fifty years
ago London staymaker named Mills
introduced an improved formation of
staymaking, the texture elastic and
wholly banishing upright pieces; but
the greatest evil escaped and contin-
ues to escape remedy. Nearly all
staymakers render the structure of
the corset sufficiently narrow of its
being drawn at the back far too tight
for the health of the wearer.
MANY FORMS OF ILI-HEALTH PRODUCED.
Sensible ladies leave the permanent
lacing of the interval at the back Of
their stays untouched. That interval
according to high authority, should
not be less than an inch in breadth
10 as to leave the spinal column un
covered by the corsets. Ladies, how
ever, who lack common sense, strain
tug, pull and haul at the lacing at the
back Of their stays, or they hold OF
to horizontal put up il
their dressing-rooms, while theil
maids tug, pull and haul at the
Say laces, until the requisite chou
glass" or "wasp" effect is produced
Are there any other results, it may bt
asked, from this elegant process o
garroting the female form. There are
good many, and we will venture to
enumerate few. On the authority o
the most eminent physicians and sur
geons OF the last two generations il
may he stated that in the head tight
lacing produces giddiness, headache